"Should so much come too short of your great trespass /As but to banish you, whither would you go?"

If you haven't yet seen Sir Ian McKellan's delivery of the Sir Thomas Moore monologue on Stephen Colbert's show, please do watch and listen:

 

The Pope on cinema

Tangentially related to most of what I post here: I recommend reading Pope Leo's short address on cinema: 

The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what “works,” but art opens up what is possible. Not everything has to be immediate or predictable.  Defend slowness when it serves a purpose, silence when it speaks and difference when evocative. Beauty is not just a means of escape; it is above all an invocation...Art must not shy away from the mystery of frailty; it must engage with it and know how to remain before it. Without being didactic, authentically artistic forms of cinema possess the capacity to educate the audience’s gaze.

The Doherty draft Preferred Schematic Design

All 864 pages of it are online here, and this is what will be voted on tomorrow evening. I should also note that I was not at the last building committee meeting (postponed meetings due to snow), so I can't vouch for what was and wasn't said then, let alone what has come up in other places.
I'll say that the thing that really concerns me about this is it continues to be framed--including by the district itself, in repeated phone calls to families--that this is a vote on the preferred site.
It is much much more than that. It is a vote on the preferred design of the school, including what's included in what is being requested.

As you'd expect in 864 pages, there's a lot there (this is a report that could do with both page numbers and internal hyperlinks).

WPS things to do this weekend!

A few things to bring to your attention:

• the Doherty football team has made the division 4 state playoffs. They play against Wahconah (the Western Mass division champs) at 2 pm tomorrow at Doyle Field in Leominster.
• Burncoat Middle and High Schools are producing A Christmas Story tonight and tomorrow night at the middle school at 7 pm. Tickets are $5/children and $8/adults. A bit of this was performed at the arts quadrant show last weekend, and it looks like quite an excellent show!

Good luck/break a leg to those involved!

New courses being considered for next year

Three Dimensional Design

 Advanced Three Dimensional Design

 Photography

Digital Media Research

African American Studies

Financial Literacy 

Forensics

Arts Appreciation & Critique

Class Guitar

Community Arts Internship

Dance for Fitness

Introduction of Music Theory

Introduction of Music History

Introduction to Theatre

Percussion Ensemble

Songwriting

These are proposed courses; the schools then can look at their teaching staff to see if they have the expertise and staff to teach that course. 
Rodrigues comments that this is atypically late in the year for the courses to be considered; that to redraft the course description sheet
Biancheria pushing to be sure that the courses are presented to students so they know that it is available
wondering how the course enrollment will look (now a motion)